Trade and Development
37 items available
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The Trade and Development Series seeks to provide objective, accessible information about the new trade agenda. Titles in the series cover a wide range of topics, from regional trade agreements and customs reform to agriculture, intellectual property rights, services, and other key issues currently being discussed in World Trade Organization negotiations. Contributors to the series represent some of the world’s leading thinkers and specialists on international trade issues. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of the Trade Group's Advisory Board in the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network.
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Publication
Global Value Chains in a Postcrisis World : A Development Perspective
(World Bank, 2010)The world is in the midst of a sporadic and painful recovery from the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s Great Depression. The unprecedented scale of the crisis and the speed of its transmission have revealed the interdependence of the global economy and the increasing reliance by businesses on global value chains (GVCs). These chains represent the process of ever-finer specialization and geographic fragmentation of production, with the more labor-intensive portions transferred to developing countries. As the recovery unfolds, it is time to take stock of the aftereffects and to draw lessons for the future. Have we experienced the first global crisis of the 21st century or a more structural crisis of globalization? Will global trade, demand, and production look the same as before, or have fundamental changes occurred? How have lead firms responded to the crisis? Have they changed their supply chain strategies? Who are the winners and losers of the crisis? Where are the engines of recovery? After reviewing the mechanisms underpinning the transmission of economic shocks in a world economy where trade and GVCs play increasing roles, the book assesses the impact of the crisis on global trade, production, and demand in a variety of sectors, including apparel, automobiles, electronics, commodities, and off-shore services. The book offers insights on the challenges and opportunities for developing countries, with a particular focus on entry and upgrading possibilities in GVCs postcrisis. Business strategies and related changes in GVCs are also examined, and the book offers concrete policy recommendations and suggests a number of interventions that would allow developing countries to better harness the benefits of the recovery. -
Publication
Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Asia
(World Bank, 2009)This study is part of a global research project seeking to understand the changing scope and impact of the policy bias against agriculture and the reasons behind agricultural policy reforms in Africa, Europe's transition economies, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia. One purpose of the project is to obtain quantitative indicators of the effects of recent policy interventions. A second objective is to gain a deeper understanding of the political economy of trends in the distortions in agricultural incentives in various national settings. The third goal is to use this deeper understanding to explore the prospects for reducing the distortions in agricultural incentives and discover the likely implications for agricultural competitiveness, equality, and poverty reduction in many countries, large and small. This book provides an overview of the evolution of the distortions to agricultural incentives caused by price and trade policies in the World Bank-defined regions of East Asia and South Asia. The volume includes an introduction and summary chapter and commissioned studies of three Northeast Asian, five Southeast Asian, and four South Asian economies. The chapters are followed by two appendixes. The first appendix describes the methodology the authors have used to measure the nominal and relative rates of assistance for farmers and the taxes and subsidies on food consumption. The second appendix provides summaries of the author's annual estimates of these rates of assistance across the focus economies. Together, the 12 economies the authors study account for no less than 95 percent of the region's agricultural value added, farm households, total population, and total gross domestic product. -
Publication
The International Migration of Women
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)Women now account for nearly half of all international migration. Theoretical and empirical models that omit gendered determinants and impacts of migration are missing key elements of the story. Women's roles in destination labor markets and in remittance flows-to cite just two examples-are crucial to understanding the development impacts of international migration. This volume surveys the state of our knowledge and provides new research on the gendered determinants and impacts of migration and remittances as well as on the patterns of labor market participation of women migrants. It also sketches a road map for future research on gender and international migration. This research on women and international migration illustrates the type of analytical work that can shape policies to economically empower women migrants as well as women left behind by male migration. It is authors' hope that such analysis will lead to policies that boost productivity, raise incomes, and improve welfare in both sending and receiving countries. This volume addresses several issues. The introductory chapter provides an overview of the volume; it includes a description of methodology, data, main results, and conclusions from the six remaining chapters. The second chapter reviews the existing research on gender and international migration and can be considered a starting point for the remaining chapters. The third chapter focuses on the gendered determinants of migration and remittances in rural Mexico, an important sending country. The following two chapters (chapters 4 and 5) address the impact of migration and remittances on sending countries and provide analysis of household- level data from Ghana and Mexico. Chapter 6 turns to the labor market participation and performance of female migrants in a major destination country, the United States. The volume concludes with a forward-looking chapter that summarizes the major findings, links those to migration policy, and outlines some of the important research and policy issues that need to be addressed in the future.